Why differentiate?

As educators, our main goal(s) of designing educational programming should be set with the intent to meet both the academic and emotional needs of ALL students in each of our classes. Ideally, ALL of our students should be working along their own learning continuum at their own pace.

We all know that each of our students has unique needs and abilities when it comes to performing in the classroom. With the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB), the educator’s primary focus has been on trying to get the students who are lagging behind, back on track with the average learners.

Unintentionally, by this shift in focus, our high-end learners have suffered because they have not been able to move forward at their own speed.

School, for these high-end learners, has the potential to become a bore, a holding cell, a place where students learn that their unique learning needs don’t matter as much as their peers learning needs.

Differentiation in the regular classroom is not just a frill, an extra, but an integral and necessary component to the new Proficiency-Based Learning model (PBL) that many school districts across the nation have now implemented. Without it, PBL, will not work. The ‘assembly line’ model of the 20th century does not work for 21st-century students. We must meet our students where they are, and provide them with educational opportunities that are catered to their unique needs.